Laura actually gave an example of Maladaptive Daydreaming many years ago in Amazing Grace and Adventure Series (now part of the Wave Series):
I remembered reading this several years ago, but at that time I was still not getting it. Now I understand that it was the Frank's version of Maladaptive Daydreaming!
It would be nice if Laura could update this story with an explanation about MD so that other people who would read this would not miss it, like I did.
Here is a description of different movements that people use during their MD:
The contrast between the fantasy world of the omnipotent four-year-old who threatened his mother with suicide to obtain relief from external pressures, and the real world in which he was continuously frustrated, was clearly too painful to deal with. At that age, or perhaps even earlier, this dissonance may have caused him to make an unconscious decision to live in the fantasy world where he was omnipotent and omniscient. In his private world, he felt special and entitled to things for which he had not worked nor put forth the effort expected of ordinary human beings. And it was from this platform that the next interesting phenomenon developed.
As he grew older, Frank learned a curious trick. He discovered that a sort of rhythmic dancing and creation of vibratory sounds and sensations enabled him to enter and sustain this fantasy existence to an extraordinary degree. In this trance, he was the only occupant of the universe and he was entitled to all its secrets and lore. The way he did this was to perform a sort of “crane dance” while beating the ground with a stick. He once demonstrated this for me and it was, as close as I can describe it, a shamanic performance of pure instinct.
The soothing effect of retreating into this trance state was so effective that, in the same way some people become addicted to other things, Frank became addicted to being in a trance. He had discovered the ultimate means of retreating into what was, effectively, a pre-birth state of nonexistence.
It is likely that the first time he achieved this state, it was accidental. He described it as having occurred after one of the episodes where he reached out to his parents for love and acceptance and, instead, received a lecture which included a list of all his faults and failings. He went out to the back yard and picked up a stick and began to pound the ground with it. As he did so, he became fascinated by both the vibratory sensation traveling up the stick from the impact, as well as the sound itself. He then began to experiment with different rhythms, most likely in an idle way, and then found himself entranced. At that point, the trance dancing began.
Thus he learned a trick that provided comfort.
Frank began to stimulate the trance state habitually in order to derive pleasure and gratification in a world that was not very friendly to his real self. The fact that this self-gratification was so easy to produce, rapidly conditioned him to prefer it. This, of course, produced another effect: laziness. But, this was not laziness in the ordinary sense of the word. Frank became lazy in the psychological sense because he learned that fantasy land was preferable to investing efforts in reality where failure was assured. Frank became just like a rat with an electrode implanted in the pleasure center of the brain, repeatedly pushing the button that induced ecstasy in preference to real life.
And here we have an important clue as to how and why Frank also developed highly specific abilities that enabled certain results to transpire in my interactions with him.
Frank was performing this ritual stick dance so often that his parents became concerned and, at a very early age, they labeled him as “sick” and called in a psychiatrist.
This shamed his father terribly and only added to the demands being made on Frank to “toughen up” and “be a man.” Frank reacted by intensifying his “ritualistic” behavior and time spent in a trance, though he learned to hide it better.
Frank had acquired the gift of the Crane Dance. At what cost, we can only guess.
The Wave Chapter 44: The Crane Dance
Any reader who goes through the Cassiopaean Transcripts with care will come to the realization that, more than anything else, the dialogues represent a personal diary of my life. They will also rea…cassiopaea.orgChapter Thirty-five: The Crane Dance
According to the latest researches in cognitive science, we do what we do to survive because we have little choice in the matter. Gurdjieff was right and modern day psychological studies repeatedl…cassiopaea.org
Frank had, by this time, described to me his Crane Dance trances and claimed that during these states, he channeled incredible information that he was simply unable to express. I had the feeling that it was more that he was unwilling to put the effort into it than anything. As he had grown up, he had “graduated” from the Dancing mode of entrancement to other repetitive actions that produced the same result such as juggling balls or any group of small objects.
Chapter Thirty-six: Hailing the Universe
We come at last to the crux of the matter: the Cassiopaean Experiment. How, in Heaven’s name, did it come about, considering that it was initiated by two such “damaged” individua…cassiopaea.org
I remembered reading this several years ago, but at that time I was still not getting it. Now I understand that it was the Frank's version of Maladaptive Daydreaming!
It would be nice if Laura could update this story with an explanation about MD so that other people who would read this would not miss it, like I did.
Here is a description of different movements that people use during their MD:
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